With shark lectures over the turn of the year

Back in September, René Näf from the Swiss team was able to inspire a group of divers with his presentations as the official Sharkproject speaker for Sharkweeks. Now, on his private holiday, which took him to Egypt once again, he simply packed up the presentation slides again in order to explain the importance of sharks for the marine ecosystem to more holidaymakers in collaboration with the Orca Dive Clubs - Soma Bay Diving Centre.

Egypt, Sea and Sharks

Shortly before his holiday in Soma Bay, René Näf contacted the Orca Divers diving centre and suggested that they give lectures on sharks during his stay as a special goodie for the guests. The Orca and Breakers teams were immediately on board and a 45-minute session was arranged. As well-behaved as the Breakers were in announcing the event in their app and the Orcas put up flyers at the base, the hotel managers unfortunately forgot to mention the lecture during the evening speech.

Nevertheless, René was delighted to have an audience of around twenty people - mostly divers - on 28 December 2023. For obvious reasons, they were very interested in the difficult situation of the sharks. 

As many interested parties only found out about the exciting offer afterwards, René and the diving centre spontaneously scheduled a second date for 6 January 2024. This time, more than thirty guests attended, including some with a lot of shark experience. Nevertheless, the feedback clearly showed that awareness of the threat posed by sharks is still far from universal. This makes such information events and low-threshold access all the more important.

As the audience diligently scanned the QR code to the homepage and collected our business cards, we can now hope that one or two people will soon actively support us as team members.

The Lectures

How much shark knowledge can you fit into a school lesson? With good preparation and an interested audience, you can not only cover the "A to Z" from "anatomy" to "teeth", but even show exciting videos. In both presentations, René first briefly introduced the Sharkproject organisation and our work. After a brief digression on the anatomy and teeth of these top predators, we moved on from the importance of sharks in the ecosystem to diving with sharks. The topic of "fear of sharks" (which is completely unfounded - respect and correct behaviour are crucial!) The threat posed towards sharks and what we can do about it was not neglected either.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Orca team and the Breakers marketing team for their excellent cooperation.